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Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications

Eliminating warpage in injection molded polymeric parts is one of the most important problems in the injection molding industry today. This situation is critical in geometries that are particularly susceptible to warping due to their geometric features, and this occurs with topologies of great lengt...

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Autores principales: Torres-Alba, Abelardo, Mercado-Colmenero, Jorge Manuel, Caballero-Garcia, Juan de Dios, Martin-Doñate, Cristina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9921164/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36771859
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15030558
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author Torres-Alba, Abelardo
Mercado-Colmenero, Jorge Manuel
Caballero-Garcia, Juan de Dios
Martin-Doñate, Cristina
author_facet Torres-Alba, Abelardo
Mercado-Colmenero, Jorge Manuel
Caballero-Garcia, Juan de Dios
Martin-Doñate, Cristina
author_sort Torres-Alba, Abelardo
collection PubMed
description Eliminating warpage in injection molded polymeric parts is one of the most important problems in the injection molding industry today. This situation is critical in geometries that are particularly susceptible to warping due to their geometric features, and this occurs with topologies of great length and slenderness with high changes in thickness. These features are, in these special geometries, impossible to manufacture with traditional technologies to meet the dimensional and sustainable requirements of the industry. This paper presents an innovative green conformal cooling system that is specifically designed for parts with slender geometric shapes that are highly susceptible to warping. Additionally, the work presented by the authors investigates the importance of using highly conductive inserts made of steel alloys in combination with the use of additively manufactured conformal channels for reducing influential parameters, such as warpage, cooling time, and residual stresses in the complex manufacturing of long and slender parts. The results of this real industrial case study indicated that the use of conformal cooling layouts decreased the cycle time by 175.1 s—66% below the current cooling time; the temperature gradient by 78.5%—specifically, 18.16 °C; the residual stress by 39.78 MPa—or 81.88%; and the warpage by 6.9 mm—or 90.5%. In this way, it was possible to achieve a final warping in the complex geometry studied of 0.72 mm, which was under the maximum value required at the industrial level of 1 mm. The resulting values obtained by the researchers present a turning point from which the manufacturing and sustainability in the injection molding of said plastic geometries is possible, and they take into account that the geometric manufacturing features analyzed will present a great demand in the coming years in the auto parts manufacturing industry.
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spelling pubmed-99211642023-02-12 Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications Torres-Alba, Abelardo Mercado-Colmenero, Jorge Manuel Caballero-Garcia, Juan de Dios Martin-Doñate, Cristina Polymers (Basel) Article Eliminating warpage in injection molded polymeric parts is one of the most important problems in the injection molding industry today. This situation is critical in geometries that are particularly susceptible to warping due to their geometric features, and this occurs with topologies of great length and slenderness with high changes in thickness. These features are, in these special geometries, impossible to manufacture with traditional technologies to meet the dimensional and sustainable requirements of the industry. This paper presents an innovative green conformal cooling system that is specifically designed for parts with slender geometric shapes that are highly susceptible to warping. Additionally, the work presented by the authors investigates the importance of using highly conductive inserts made of steel alloys in combination with the use of additively manufactured conformal channels for reducing influential parameters, such as warpage, cooling time, and residual stresses in the complex manufacturing of long and slender parts. The results of this real industrial case study indicated that the use of conformal cooling layouts decreased the cycle time by 175.1 s—66% below the current cooling time; the temperature gradient by 78.5%—specifically, 18.16 °C; the residual stress by 39.78 MPa—or 81.88%; and the warpage by 6.9 mm—or 90.5%. In this way, it was possible to achieve a final warping in the complex geometry studied of 0.72 mm, which was under the maximum value required at the industrial level of 1 mm. The resulting values obtained by the researchers present a turning point from which the manufacturing and sustainability in the injection molding of said plastic geometries is possible, and they take into account that the geometric manufacturing features analyzed will present a great demand in the coming years in the auto parts manufacturing industry. MDPI 2023-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9921164/ /pubmed/36771859 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15030558 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Torres-Alba, Abelardo
Mercado-Colmenero, Jorge Manuel
Caballero-Garcia, Juan de Dios
Martin-Doñate, Cristina
Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications
title Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications
title_full Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications
title_fullStr Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications
title_full_unstemmed Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications
title_short Application of New Conformal Cooling Layouts to the Green Injection Molding of Complex Slender Polymeric Parts with High Dimensional Specifications
title_sort application of new conformal cooling layouts to the green injection molding of complex slender polymeric parts with high dimensional specifications
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9921164/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36771859
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15030558
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